The other day I got an email from the professor of my multimedia 2010 and 2030 classes. His name is Anonymous Smith. Yes really. But anyway that's not the point of this blog. I'll comment on his strange choice of names later. He relayed a message that the Fine Arts department is looking for two student representatives to attend faculty meetings and then it's their responsibility to relay anything important that happens back to the students. Well I didn't think too much of it at the time, but then in class the professor asked if anyone was interested. As an impulse decision I raised my hand - you know I was a T.A. rep back at Hat High. So anyway to make this mediumly long story shorter, I had the first multimedia student I found nominate me and next thing you know I and some third year student are both elected by default. So now that I am the new Student Rep of New Media (formerly known as Multimedia) I expect you all to bow in my presence and say in unison - "All Hail Mighty Lord Jeff the Student Rep of New Media!" or at least, "congratulations" if that's all you can muster.

Things and Stuff. I hate things and stuff. I have a teacher who is losing all her creditablity with me. She does a few things that to me as a student are very dumb. First of all, she gives the appearance of not knowing what she is talking about. That's one of the worst things about her. She doesn't seem qualified to be there. I mean, I could probably do a better job faking teaching the class with the class manual than she is. Quite often she will work something out on the board and ask the students what the answer is. Imagine, for example, that "2+2=4" was written on the board. She asks what the answer is and waits for some on to say, "4". It is so painful I want to gouge my own eyes out. Since she asks stupid things like that, no one answers even when she asks good questions, not just for things off the board. It's a horrible 3 hour class where no one talks. One time she asked us, "As users what would you like to see in an information system at your company?" A few people answered, and I'll sum up what they said.

There are some things that I like about the system we have now. There is also some stuff that I don't like about it. I would take the stuff I don't like about it and do things to change the stuff to make something that would be better than the old stuff that was complicated/didn't work/was cumbersom. I would also take the good stuff and do things to make it better. If you could do stuff to think outside the box, it would make things more synergistic and we would be more comptetitive in the e-economy and we would have more b2b and b2c business.

I hate Things and Stuff.

ps. To Anna and Jeff, I don't have very many good pics of you, so if you have a favorite, I'm more than willing to change the photos as soon as you post/send them.

I came across this Dave Barry blog link on plastic. I especially liked Dave's Lord of the Rings review.

I found a message on my answering machine the other day from Don at Memory Lane Computers. Apparently he is upset that I have been using my http://www2.memlane.com/jmilner/ address to post my "web portfolio" and I guess he wants me to take it down. I guess it's no big deal now that I have http://www.milnerdesign.com but it still somewhat ticks me off especially not only working there for those 3 or so years, but also because he was so rude about it on the phone; not to mention that I have been giving them business by sending my clients to them for hosting. But whatever - I've deleted it now and I don't plan on looking back. But I probably will not purchase my next computer from them.

I was taking pictures at a panel discussion about what the future of computing will be in the next ten years, and all of the sudden a cell phone rang. Everybody looks around, and guess whos phone it was. It was the speakers! His own phone rang during his part of the discussion.

Then the next day, I was sitting in class and a cell phone rang. Everybody looked around to see who's it was, and it turns out that it was the teacher's own phone. I guess that students/audience members aren't the only inconsiderate ones.

Anyway, those were my two funny cell phone stories.

How does everybody like the new profile pictures. Just ask me anytime if you want me to change them. I might need you to send a pic because I don't have very many of Anna or Jeff.

The swim meet was great. I had personal bests in 4 out of my 5 swims. As of this posting the site is not updated but I should now be ranked in the top 70 of all Canada. This time the ranking will be more accurate because most of the Universities will have posted their swimmers times.

I didn't take my own camera to the swim meet because I forgot it! Yes, I didn't remember to take it when I rushed out the door to catch the bus. Speaking of the pictures from this weekend, do you want me to send that link out to my swim team - that will probably give your site some substantial traffic - ok like 40 hits, but there are lots of pictures that don't really apply to them and they are all really small. I think I'd just like the originals zipped, and then I'll go through and select which ones to post ect. BTW I liked the edit of Brock's shirt. Nice work Gary.

One last thing, I am probably not going to Calgary to see Jackie off. I have things I need to do here including another Swim Meet (or is that the weekend after this?) Either way I'll have to check. If I don't have a swim meet I'll have a training course for Water Safety Instructor. Also do you think you could get a better picture of me - I am sick of the kayaking one. Actually the kayaking one is probably better than some other random picture you might get of me. I guess thats life.

The swim meet ended, and I have a website completed for it. It's all the digital pics Jeff and I took over the weekend. It sort of surprised me that he didn't bring his camera, but maybe he didn't want to lose it. I made the website with photoshop, and it automatically made all the thumbnails, and coded all the html pages for me. It's pretty nice, but I'm sort of disappointed that it made all the larger images so small, I guess that's what it's set at, but whatever, when I get around to it, I'll make a couple of zip files of them all. (There are 64 megs of pictures). Right now, people will just have to be satisfied with what there is.

I had a pretty good time at the swim meet, and it made me wish I was still in swim club. Unfortunatly the first rule of my swim club is to not talk about my swim club. I'm pretty excited to see the pics from my film camera. I'm pretty sure that I got some really good ones. Surprisingly enough, I didn't take many digital pics of Jeff, but I guess that's ok.

So I had a fighting dream last night. Since that is the most interesting thing to happen to me in a little while, I might as well relate the story to you all.

I was at a church in Taber and there was an activity going on, (I wasn't involved with the activity) but as I left the church I somehow started talking to Jeff Thompson's daughter (who I have never talked to in real life, I don't even know her name, she just happened to be at the activity). We were both on our way home and some guy started lipping me or that girl off, so I punched him in the face a couple of times and sent him running away.
A little while later, we were still walking along and an arrow flew by me. The guy had come for revenge! He shot a few more arrows that flew wildly by. Apparently the guy figured out that the bow and arrow wasn't his best option so he ran over to fight again. I didn't really want to hurt the guy, so I decided that I would choke him untill he passed out and then I could leave. It worked just like I had planned (imagine that) and I was once again on my way home. A little while later, he drove by me in a dirty white van and decided that his best option would be to run me over. Since I was on foot, I mangaged to elude him for awhile and so the guy changed his plan once again. (Really I think that was his major downfall, he wasn't commited enough to really do any damage.)
As he drove up to me, I spoted an ambulance and ran up to it to ask for help because everyone knows if you can't see a policeman, find an paramedic. So anyway, the guy got out of his van and he had three baseball bats in his arms, but he's was carrying them like firewood. I realised that I had better do something before he can actually get one bat ready. I charge him and manage to get two of the bats away from him on my first try. I thought to myself, "I can't fight with two bats", so I hit one on the ground and it disintegrated into splinters. By then the guy was ready to attack me, and we both swung our bats like swords and they collided. Unluckily for me, my bat flew out of my hand and went under the ambulance. I quickly ran onto the sidewalk and try to reach under it to get my bat back, but I couldn't reach it. The crazy bat guy came around the front of the ambulance but luckily it was parked really close to the curb, and there was a 4 foot chainlink fence, this prevented him from getting a good swing. He missed on his first swing, and I quickly advanced to get his third bat away from him, which I did and then I proceded to be the tar out of him. I wasn't really worried that he would be permanently injured because of the ambulance.
Anyway that's it.

Hello to everyone in Blogland! Well, after a lot of almost unbearable peer pressure, here it is...my first ever blog entry! Just a little bit about myself...I'm 5'10", blonde, blue eyes, and I enjoy candle lit dinners and long walks along the beach. I'm looking for someone tall, athletic, and sensitive with a good sense of humor. I need a man who can sing me love songs, cook romantic dinners and sweep me off my feet with his charm. Hmmm...I wonder if Gary will read this. Well, maybe I'll just settle with someone tall.

I've finally attended all 5 of my classes and I've come to the conclusion that 5 classes is too many classes to have at one time. Unfortunately I want to finish school asap. This morning I went to my Mgis 333 class, and a professor walks in and says, "Is this 'Growing Marijuana for Fun and Profit?", we all sort of smiled and said yeah. Anyway the guy fooled around with the lights for a while making a few jokes about how the dim lights made the classroom romantic, when another professor walks into the class. She asks, "Am I in the right place? Is this Mgis333?" We all said yes, and the first guy looks at his notes and asks is this room 159, as it turns out it was room 157 and he was in the wrong classroom. I went to the wrong class once, but at least no one in the class knew because I just left when I realized what day it was.

I think that we might start posting more now that we are back in school, because now we will have more opportunity to have funny, interesting or just plain annoying things happen to us. Anyway, I'm back to work at the Guantlet. Today James said something really dumb. I'll just give a snippet. We were talking about the various merits of marrige, when he said, "Why can't you just have a 'wedding' without actually legally being married." Think about that one for a while. I said that, that was one of the dumbest things I had ever heard. In the top 10 dumbest anyway.

If you are wondering how to put an image into a post, just enter the html code for putting up an image into your post. I guess if you have to you can just view the code as an example.

My Christmas vacation was a blast. I took a bus down to California - 46 and a half hours later I arrived at the Disneyland Hotel. Quite possibly the happiest place on earth. After spending 4 days with Anna-Maria and her family I hopped on another bus and drove down the State to meet up with my swim team. Lots of practicing, lots of time on the beach, and plenty of sun all around - it was actually a really fun time. I was glad to get home though and now that I am home I switched into the multimedia program and things are going just great. The posts on here have been getting fewer and fewer, maybe we need to recruit some more posters since Tracie has never posted and the three of us that do post are quite busy with school. Except for Gary who I recently heard choked while trying to beat his record of 1 full orange in his mouth with 2 full oranges in his mouth meanwhile trying to straighting his crooked head.

Did you ever meet someone who could fit a whole orange in his mouth before?
I've just noticed that either my head is crooked, or my glasses are bent.

Here are some pictures from my trip. More details to follow (later).
My Christmas vacation was excellent. I'll post the pictures when I have them zipped.

Anna, maybe you should sue them. At least you got to see a half decent movie after all the commercials, what if the frutopia ad had been the best part of the entire show? That would have sucked.

Well, I guess I do have some good things to say about my life so far.

Today I had an appointment to switch my academic concentration away from finance and into Management of Information Systems. This is where the really good news comes in. As it turns out, with the new concentrations, I get to use a computer class that I took way back in 95 (that's 1995 not 2095 for all you non-y2k compliant people) so that put me one class closer to graduation. Another stroke of good luck is that the advisor noticed that I had taken geog 333 twice and got b+ both times and asked why I repeated. To make a long story short, it's because it transferred as being the same class. The advisor insisted that I go speak to someone in the geography dept about at least getting credit for a sr. level science class. She even printed out 2 pages of the MHC class descriptions website for me. I went up to see the prof. in charge of that sort of stuff, and he said, "Ok I'll call the registrars office and have them change it in the computer for you." So that's the story about the easiest $500 that I ever saved. That means that after this semester, I'll only have 3 classes to go until graduation instead of 5. This has been the best day of the whole Christmas vacation.

That's when my day took a terrible turn for the worse. I decided that since I wasn't doing anything else, I would go to the bank and update my address. I rode the bus an hour to get there only to find out that I am at least mildly mental because my address had already been changed. After thinking about it for another hour on the bus ride home, I still don't remember updating the address. Tracie must have done it over the phone or Internet or something. Maybe I did it, but I sure don't remember.